Ernest Hemingway texts to go on show for first time

Unpublished work by Ernest Hemingway about the hunt for German submarines off the Cuban coast during the Second World War are to be released next week.

Ernest Hemingway as he learns he had won the Pullitzer prize for his novel 'The Old man and the sea' in 1954. The screenplay for the novel will be included in the showPhoto: AFP/GETTY

11:08AM GMT 02 Jan 2009

The author wrote coded notes about tracking Nazi vessels while serving on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico.

They are among 3,000 pieces of work by the Nobel laureate to that will be placed on the internet by curators at the writer's former home in Cuba.

Experts at the museum in Havana say there are few new literary texts but fans may find clues to some unexplained chapters in Hemingway's colourful life.

The collection includes the epilogue of For Whom the Bell Tolls and the screenplay for The Old Man and the Sea.

Inaurys Portuondo, the museum's digital specialist, said: "This is an exquisite selection. There are no unedited literary [works], at least as far as we know, but we know that specialists might be able to come up with new theories after consulting the archive."

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After the United States entered the Second World War in 1941, Hemingway joined in efforts to hunt German submarines threatening shipping off Cuba and the US. Curator Ada Rosa Alfonso said that the documents relating to submarines could serve to "corroborate Hemingway's theory that they were refuelling in the north of the island".

The release of the Hemingway archive is part of a joint project between the Cuban National Cultural Heritage Council and the US Social Science Research Council.